Open source still lacked love for Windows in 2009
Whenever I feel a need for traffic, and talkbacks, I just write something with Microsoft or Windows in the title and y'all come running. (This is an April Fool's image of CEO Steve Ballmer with a Gorbachev-like birthmark.)
This was still true in 2009. Some of our most popular posts were all about how unfair Microsoft was being to open source.
But one thing has changed. It's no longer personal. It's no longer Billgatus of Borg. It's more institutional. (OK, we still love to laugh at the Steve Ballmer "developers" video.)
I know the Gates-hate has died down because this was our 23rd most popular post of the year:
Bill Gates demands open source --An oldie but a goodie. This July 2006 post described the Gates Foundation's insistence that AIDS researchers share their discoveries as the price of getting its cash. It smelled like open source spirit to me, and apparently to you as well.
Other popular Microsoft posts were more conventional:
Why Android is beating Windows Mobile --This October story drew 33 votes, a rating of +13, and over 100 talkbacks. In it I compared Microsoft's mobile strategy to that of Symbian. Fighting words, those. And I contrasted it with what Google was doing with Android. Which y'all liked. It was the 19th most popular post of the year.
Netbooks killing Windows faster than expected --This February post was highly provocative, drawing 166 talkbacks and becoming the 14th most-popular post of the year. My point was that Microsoft was not making money on Netbook versions of Windows, and that the rise of low-cost hardware would endanger the company down the road. You disagreed.
Why Microsoft won round one of netbook wars --This April post, on a similar subject to the one above, drew 196 talkbacks and became the 10th most popular post of the year with over 15,000 page views. It described my trip to Fry's seeking a laptop with Linux, and my discovery that there was no such thing.
Many noted there were many available via mail order, and Linus Foundation head Jim Zemlin later showed me hardware identical to what I bought, which he'd had loaded with Ubuntu Linux.
Fight Windows tax with a penguin stick --I wrote this in the wake of my trip to Taiwan for CompuTex, finding an enormous supply of USB sticks and not enough good uses for them. (Making them look like sushi doesn't count.) So why not distribute Linux on USB sticks and give them away at trade shows, I suggested.
I got 205 comments, 18 more thumbs-ups than thumbs-down, and it was the 7th most popular post of the year. It turns out an outfit called Pendrivelinux has productized this solution.
Christmas is still a few days away. You can run this Linux under Windows, so if you feel real Grinchy load it onto a teen's game machine on Christmas Eve and leave it turned-on until they wake up.